He gets that gregarious “dapper Dan” style from his father, he says: “You look at photos of him from back in the day, it’s like Eddie Murphy in Raw: full leathers, V-neck with the hairy chest – when my dad walks down the road, everyone knows him, you know?”

So while I’ve been trying to make this site a bit more user-friendly, site redesign forthcoming, at the end of the day there’s just too much music that I’m genuinely excited about to review at length. This post was intended to simply draw your attention to a recent reissue via Burnt Friedman’s Nonplace label of German percussionist Manos Tsangaris’ super-ahead-of-its-time 1990 Elephant's Easy Moonwalk Through The Nighttwo-tracker, augmented with an equally exciting new B-side cut. But we also touch on a mid-90s Memphis rap touchstone, a lowkey classic early 70s French neo-noir soundtrack, and a trio of recent and long overdue reissues from the Portuguese and Italian labels Holuzam and Soave. It’s a quick but heady dive so strap in!

A review of the second in Unseen Worlds ongoing and very essential vinyl compiling of living legend Carl Stone’s earlier works, compilations that double as both a history of electronic music and a free ride on the plane of immanence.

OK, apologies for the WIP but took a minute to really take stock of the records new and old that are hitting shops right now that are worth your and my time. This is largely an exercise in imaginary wish fulfillment as I’ll likely not be able to get many of these records before they sell out. But fear not, I got you covered with a selection of Japanese tribal ambient, British library music, Toronto noise techno, stripped-back spiritualist beats, and much more!

What the hell is this bullshit?! Like many other dorks, I greet those Boomkat ‘special record’ emails with a healthy bit of skepticism. No matter how sincere they may be or how cynical, the passion that permeates each mailer is often enough to at least get me to check the record out. So when I read about computer rave hooligans EVOL making the ultimate rave tool by stitching together 303 classic acid turnes (or rather momentary glimpses of them) into a twenty-minute functional chin-scratcher, I was admittedly hopeful that such a gimmicky concept could work. Well, to say I was wrong doesn’t even begin to articulate what ensued.

I almost didn’t do it. The idea of reviewing the new Timedance comp seemed like an invitation to lose myself in a larger project I’m working on. But it also presented a chance to at least try and hear this singular comp with different ears. Of course, that’s wishful thinking so please join me somewhere in the middle from where I will be reviewing this album today;)

Last week I was rendered gobsmacked by the news that my beloved Newworldaquarium/154 (producer Jochem Peteri) would be returning with his first newly-recorded set of material following the birth of his second child. Marked by a celebratory spirit, it's also a release fueled by the joys of creative discovery as it marks the first material Peteri has recorded using his trusted and long-fruitful analog set-up, which has this time been enhanced by a digital tool set that has seemingly given him the means to craft an utterly breathtaking twenty-two minute environmental piece of ambience that is in equal turns entrancing and intoxicating. And while I've always been hard-pressed to find a work of Petri's I don't love, I still had to at least attempt to listen to this new Boomkat-released single with quasi-objective ears and report on what they found. Bolstered by the concept of family, the release sees Petri moving into exciting new terrain while employed decades-old sonic strategies that continue to bear new fruit. It's a family affair, indeed.

It's funny how hard it is for me to be sensible sometimes. Giving props where they are do, as I already review records on the regs via IG--and will continue to do so--I nonetheless was taken by Bradford Bailey of The Hum's daily album reviews and realized while I am way too long-winded to do a review a day, doing one a time makes a lot more sense than doing four or eight at once. Not exactly Copernican a revelation, is it? And to kick things off, an album that I'm starting to suspect might be topping a few best-end list...and with good reason. I've never bothered to listen to the SUED label before, but that's certainly about to change.

Damn it's been a moment. But perhaps it's just been the quiet before the storm as I've been working on a couple of deep dives and have some interviews that should be rolling in...at some point. Either way, have been working heavily on a piece assessing the state of music criticism in 2017 and knowing I wasn't going to get it done this week, I felt it at least fitting to engage in some music criticism of my own and probe some of the questions I've been struggling with in real time. Selecting four albums I haven't seen much coverage of, including the most recent Shed album that was released to the kind of deafening silence you'd expect of a secret press embargo ie. the Ducktails controversy. But we'll get to all of that soon...for now, some werid af albums that I can't recommend enough. Onward!

For as much as I dislike this part of the summer, there's always something special about it from a musical standpoint. Namely, I find myself drawn to funky and hard records with tracks full of machine grooves that pulverize each and every rhythmic molecule, picking apart a genre's DNA in the process. The four artists included in this round-up are each at different stages of their respective careers, with the oldest and youngest releasing two of the most refreshing and focused albums in their genres in the form of Nídia's slippery debut album out on Príncipe and Jay-Z's recharged and renewed 4:44--bootlegged from Tidal, but of course. Meanwhile, Bill Converse and Karen Gwyer, having released their second and third full-lengths respectively, are established techno producers whose global profiles have both been on the rise during the past couple of years. In contrast to Nídia and 4:44, both albums are considerably safe affairs that some may charge as being prime examples of dance music lacking the funkiness of the Detroit and Chicago sounds they are so faithfully channeling. However formalist either record is, both channel a certain raw emotionality that's not just funky, it's downright moving. Let's get to it...

We head into the past to make sense of the Tresor label's recent renaissance before taking a deep dive into the discography of Porter Ricks and try to make heads or tails of Terrence Dixon's baffling new EP for the label as well! Oh, and since we're taking a long overdue look at the label after it celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday, it only makes sense to take qa quick overview of their curious and engaging Dreamy Harbor. Onward!

And now for something a little bit different. We don't listen to music in a vacuum, as much as we'd like to pretend we do, and following a soul-shaking panic attack, I found myself approaching this review from a much different standpoint. I chart my personal history with anxiety while also taking in some of the crap on the internet that needlessly feeds into my various neuroses that shape how I engage with music. Oh, and there's an in-depth dive into a trio of ambient and quasi-New Age reissues in the form of Astral Industries' Chi and The Heavenly Music Corporation platters alongside Love All Day's vinyl release of the long-lost recording of Planetary Peace's synthesizer spiritualist folk-pop. So strap on your oxygen tank and join me for a swim through the informational and psychological ether...OF YOUR MIND.